On the Edge

Mapping North America's Coasts

Thomas R. Dunlap

Tells the captivating--and often harrowing--story of the 400 year effort to map North America's Coasts

Includes a set of maps, all drawn to the same projection, that show the progress of mapping the coasts of North America

Contains information on sailing, the life of a sailor, and the importance of maps and narratives to exploration

Based on the narratives of mariners who sought a passage through the continent to Asia and produced maps as a byproduct of their journeys

On the Edge

Mapping North America's Coasts

Thomas R. Dunlap

Description

With our access to Google Maps, Global Positioning Systems, and Atlases that cover all regions and terrains and tell us precisely how to get from one place to another, we tend to forget there was ever a time when the world was unknown and uncharted--a mystery waiting to be solved.

In On the Edge, Roger McCoy tells the captivating--and often harrowing--story of the 400 year effort to map North America's Coasts. Much of the book is based on the narratives of mariners who sought a passage through the continent to Asia and produced maps as a byproduct of their journeys. These courageous explorers had to rely on the most rudimentary mapping tools and to contend with unimaginably harsh conditions: ship-crushing ice floes; the threat of frostbite, scurvy, and
starvation; gold fever and mutiny; ice that could lock them in for months on end; and, inevitably, the failure to find the elusive Northwest passage. Telling the story from the explorers' perspective, McCoy allows readers to see how maps of their voyages were made and why they were so full of errors, as well as how they gradually acquired greater accuracy, especially after the longitude problem was solved. On the Edge tracks the dramatic voyages of John Cabot, John Davis, Captain Cook, Henry Hudson, Martin Frobisher, John Franklin (who nearly starved to death and become known in England as "the man who ate his boots"), and others, concluding with Robert Peary, Otto Sverdrup, and Vihjalmur Steffanson in the early twentieth century.

Drawing upon diaries, journals, and other
primary sources--and including a set of maps charting the progress of exploration over time--On the Edge shows exactly how we came to know the shape of our continent.

On the Edge

Mapping North America's Coasts

Thomas R. Dunlap

Table of Contents

1. The urge to discover lands and make maps

Part I: THE PROJECT BEGINS2. Earliest ventures to the Northwest Passage: John Cabot and others

Part II: 1576-16323. Sailors and sailing in the sixteenth century.4. Martin Frobisher succumbs to gold fever5. John Davis makes a near miss6. Henry Hudson has a very bad day7. Further efforts probe the east coasts

Part III: 1719-17898. From the Pacific and through the tundra

Part IV: 1822-18789. John Franklin's expedition fails, but opens the door to success10. The Franklin searchers almost finish the map11. Finding the North Pole

Part V: FINISHING THE PROJECT12. Amundsen sails through

EndnotesBibliographyIndex

On the Edge

Mapping North America's Coasts

Thomas R. Dunlap

Author Information

Contributors:

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On the Edge

Mapping North America's Coasts

Thomas R. Dunlap

Reviews and Awards

"This delightful and engaging historical geography is much more about exploring coasts than mapping them. What McCoy (emer., Utah) does well is to compile a chronology of several centuries of European mariners' exploits reproduced or imagined by cartographers, and to do so in a single coherent narrative and set of maps of consistent scale to illustrate the accumulation of cartographic knowledge of North American coasts up to the early 20th century. Always driving exploration was a desire to locate a Northwest Passage. The author's maps catalog the rate, extent, and accuracy of coastal exploration and mapping from the slow and awkward early years, when decades might pass before another explorer appeared, to the final intense and dramatic efforts to explore and map Arctic
coastlines. The author's writing is crisp, and the book is an accessible, enjoyable read. Summing Up: Highly recommended." -- Choice

On the Edge

Mapping North America's Coasts

Thomas R. Dunlap

From Our Blog

By Roger M. McCoy
Henry Hudson envisioned that he would be the first explorer to find the elusive western passage through North America to the Orient. He persisted in this westward looking vision although his financier, the Dutch East India Company, insisted that he search eastward through the ice-bound sea north of Russia. Hudson had previously tried this northeastern route as well as a northerly route directly over the North Pole. Both had failed due to impassable ice.